The Wicked Lady (1983) (2024)

Popular reviews

• Review by Kat ★★★★ 2

  A period movie full of lavish dress, decore, and lots of bewbies. Melodramatic but fluffy enough that it doesn't get bogged down with some of the serious and ridiculous things that happen. So camp, this needs to be a cult classic. Faye Dunaway gets to be such a baddy in this. You can tell she's having a blast.

  - Has the worst sex scene I have ever seen
  - Best whip fight
  - Most liberal peasant town ever

• Review by nathaxnne [hiatus <3] ★★★★★ 3

  CAREER OF EVIL

  I'm certain that someone very boring in your life has repeated 2 u the oft-repeated truism that crime does not pay. I suppose that depends entirely upon what u want out of crime. I say crime is its own reward. One of the things people appear to find most difficult about dealing with chaotically evil aligned individuals is that outside of a welter of immediately contradictory and frequently self-sabotaging short-term goals arising from stuff that u feel like doing or having rn or stuff u absolutely do not want to do or have in your presence/have to think about at all so u do other stuff to get that stuff or avoid the other stuff or if…

• Review by AD917 ★★½

  As I understand it, Leslie Arliss’s 1945 adaptation of Magdalen King-Hall’s novel The Life and Death of the Wicked Lady Skelton is generally well regarded by those who have seen it as a high end example of classic British cinema. So of course I chose to watch the trashy Cannon production directed by sleaze-meister Michael Winner instead.

  I can’t speak to the differences between the two versions. But it seems unlikely that Gainsborough would’ve shoehorned quite so many naked boobies into one of their famous melodramas. I think it’s probably safe to assume that Arliss didn’t open his film with a nude couple being chased through a village square after having been caught in an act of infidelity. Surely you…

• Review by RhodesMovie ★★★

  Wildly over the top, determinedly rambunctious, badly-behaved and regularly glorious. It's Sofia Coppola's Marie Antionette on Class A drugs. It ought be a cult classic, referenced an adult Carry On, but it has been consigned to a cinematic scrapheap to fester its days, only to be discovered by those with an appetite for buried rarities.

  Bodies hang from trees, Faye Dunaway is a camp villainess dressed like Queen Elizabeth I, children gawp at a man and woman shagging in a barn. This is all in the first 5-minutes. It continues as such, with beautiful scenes shot in grand old houses, showcasing the finest finery. There's also a dramatic orchestral score to embelish the richness.

  This is my first Michael Winner…

• Review by Alex ★★½ 5

  Continuing my streak of watching very popular IP that everybody knows about and has heard of. Cannon does Merchant Ivory. Michael Winner’s idea of Jane Austen. A movie that so desperately wants to be a film. Too classical in its form and romance to be Ornate Sicko Mode. These are the choices that have earned me my Madonna like gay following

• Review by Victoria ★★★

  Hay novela y una peli original. Yo sólo (no) vi a Michael Winner dirigiendo, a Cannon Group produciendo, a Faye Dunaway intentando hacer comedia y una pelea de látigos que pudo haber sigo perfecta pero se conformó y quedó en un lindísimo detalle.

• Review by Bob R. ★★

  Michael Winner directs Faye Dunaway in this lurid tale about a 19th-century bad-girl who marries into high society. When her new husband moves them to the country, our heroine seeks a little excitement and decides to become a highway robber. Melodramatic, funny and a but lurid, The Wicked Lady is a nice example of the kind of latitude western filmmakers once had before the MPAA and the PG-13 rating pretty-much did away with farces intended for (admittedly, immature) grownups.

• Review by drauch58 ★★★★

  Bah! Kicking myself for not watching this sooner. The almost unanimous negative reviews all over the net broke my "don't listen to anyone" barrier. Cannon Films, Michael Winner, Jack Cardiff, Faye Dunaway--obviously I was going to like this!

  Damn, this movie is gorgeous. I adore Renaissance costumes and sets, and Winner and Cardiff really take advantage of the large, adorned castle rooms, raving taverns, and the hills of the open countryside. And the piercing gaze Faye gives is just extraordinary. It's all very light in tone, despite bits of melodrama and even a hint of eroticism at times, with a good deal of nudity thrown in. I don't think the intention here was to make an award-winning adaptation of the novel or to trump the '45 version. I mean, hell... look at that poster. Just a goddamn good time that I plan on revisiting.

• Review by Michael501 📺 ★★

  1983 In Review - November
  #14

  Caroline is to be wed to Sir Ralph and invites her sister Barbara to be her bridesmaid. Barbara seduces Ralph, however, and she becomes the new Lady, but despite her new wealthy situation, she gets bored and turns to highway robbery for thrills.

  An early Cannon Golan-Globus film directed by Michael Winner, an interesting combination. Winner described this film as Bonnie and Clyde in the 17th century, I mean sure, it stars Faye Dunaway but the film itself is just a bore. Dull and unexciting. Some films have been forgotten for a reason, this is such a film.

• Review by Justin LaLiberty ★★½

  Like Merchant Ivory by way of Tinto Brass, only nowhere near as fun. Not as low of a low for Cannon as it is for Michael Winner, it pretty much exists solely to show topless women and public executions. That "famous" topless fight is sheer excess in the best possible way, however.

• Review by Cate ★½

  The 'Directed by Michael Winner' credit appearing over an extended unnecessary tit-shot about sums this up.

  The one thing about that this that's better than the 1945 version is the meta-gag of Jackson's hanging not taking due to Alan Bates' unusually thick neck.

• Review by matt lynch ★★½

  A tale so ribald it should've been introduced by Evelyn Quince. Alan Bates plays a 17th century highwayman named Jerry.